EverQuest Next Landmark now has official Alpha, Closed Beta, and Open Beta dates along with three brand new ways for your to enter the testing phase early. The video link is below as well as the transcript I wrote for the video’s contents. Also, the official explanation of each of the Pack items is here.

Hi, I’m Terry Michaels, Senior Producer of Everquest Next Landmark.

Landmark is a creative, social MMO unlike anything we’ve seen before. We want to do things a little different. We’re gonna give players access to our alpha, much earlier in the development process than we ever have before. We’re gonna be offering three different Founders Packs. The Trailblazer, Explorer, and the Settler Pack. Lemme tell you about each of them.

Settler Pack

The Settler Pack is the basic pack.

1. It’s going to give you access to the Closed Beta of Landmark.

2. It’s gonna have a few things that you can show off to your friends like a forum title, and in-game title, as well as a flag that you can place anywhere you want in the world that shows off what you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished.

3. We’re also gonna be giving you a Founder’s Pickaxe. Normally, when you start the game, you’re gonna start with just a pick and it’s going to be a very basic one. The Pickaxe is going to be the Top Tier 1 pick, combined with the highest tier of axe that’s going to be available in the game and this combination of tools is going to be exclusive to all of the Founder’s Packs.

Explorer Pack

And the next pack is the Explorer Pack.

1. With it, you’re gonna get access to Alpha and be one of the first people to get in the game and experience Landmark.

2. You’re gonna get everything that came with the Settler’s Pack as well as a few new things. You’re gonna get the Ring of Bounty, an accessory that allows you to go out in the world and while you’re harvesting you have a chance to get additional resources.

3. You’re also gonna get two exclusive outfits that you can only get through the Founder’s Packs. The first of those is the Courtier’s Regalia. This is a more traditional fantasy themed outfit that will look good in any castle or dungeon. And the next one is the Tech Sergant’s Gear. This outfit would look more at home on a space station or anything that’s more modern.

4. You’re also gonna get the Explorer Flag, and item you can place on any of your claims in the world to show off that you’ve been participating in the game since Alpha.

5. We’re also gonna give you a Mega Pocket. This is an item that will allow you to increase the size of either your personal inventory or your vault inventory, whichever one you feel is most appropriate for you.

Trailblazer Pack

And the last pack is the Trailblazer Pack.

1. This is for the serious Landmark player. This has everything that you get from the Settler’s Pack and the Explorer’s Pack, so you’ll be in Alpha from day one.

2. As well, we’re gonna give you a number of other items. You’re gonna get a flag that demonstrates that you’re a true Trailblazer.

3. You’re also gonna get the Void Vault. This is going to be a unique appearance item that allows you access to your vault network. An average player, it would take weeks for them gather the necessary materials and recipes to be able to be able to craft one of these in the game and you’ll have access from day one.

4. You’ll also get the Mastercraft Bracer, a must have for the serious crafter. This accessory will increase your chances to create high quality items.

5. You’ll get the Noble’s Regalia, a premium fantasy outfit that people will recognize anywhere you go. And you’ll get the Tech Conmmander’s Gear, our premium science fiction outfit.

6. You’ll get four shareable Closed Beta keys so that you and your friends can play and experience Landmark together. And you’ll get your name in the Everquest Next Landmark credits, just like me, only maybe a little lower.

7. In Landmark, finding the part of the world that you care about and that you want as your own is very important. So, as a special perk for Trailblazers, we’re gonna allow you early access to the Open Beta. Plant your flag first.

EverQuest Next’s Landmark tool was quite possibly the biggest announcement at SOE Live 2013. As such, there has been a gigantic number of questions on various forums and even on YouTube via comments. Fortunately, EQNexus has come through and provided a bunch of clarifications for us.

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As day number 3 at SOE Live gets rolling, we have a significant number of updates rolling in from the networking that went on at last night’s pool party, as well as this afternoon’s early panel on player creativity and EverQuest Next Landmark. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the info? Stay tuned to EQNexus, as we will be compiling all of the bits and pieces in our final event roundup at its conclusion. Until then, read on. The credit for covering these panels goes to: RekMMO @RekMMO and Chad Albritton @chad_Albritton.

Today’s EverQuest Next: Landmark Details

Developers are building EverQuest Next with the same tools players will use in Landmark

Players using Landmark will have an upkeep cost on the claimed area they are using.

All players will have a simple character avatar; a scaled down version of an EverQuest Next avatar.

Players may participate in multiple plots/land claims.

Everyone who participates in a build gets credit/reward for their effort.

After an item is built, it may be painted. Brushes are adjustable.

Players will be able to set up custom activity alerts about the builds they are participating in.

Players may ‘tag’ and theme their builds so others can find what they are interested in.

This tagging process will involve some browser and phone functionality and support.

The player map is the gateway and portal to other builds. Players will be able to queue up locations to visit.

Players will be able to rate and subscribe to builders they like.

Seasonal contests and challenges will be present.

When players sell their builds, they are selling a blue print, not the object itself.

Templates will help players build and are not meant just to be used in the Player Studio.

Players can assign percentages of royalties to be paid to players who participate in their builds.

No limit to what types of items players can build – Sci Fi, fantasy, modern, etc.

There will be size limits on items. No cities, can build villages and dungeons.

Builds that make it into the actual EverQuest Next release will have to fit a specific theme, be consistent with lore.

Retail price of EverQuest Next: Landmark – $0.00

The first Landmark release will include buildings only, no flora or fauna.

The Player Studio will be US only to begin. They are working to expand further.

No system requirements are available yet.

The team is debating internally about the use of 3D software to be used alongside game tools.

No Minecraft-style creative mode in Landmark.

There will be some microtransactions, but ultimately very little for sale in Landmark

Additional Panel Details and News Gatherings

The demo shown in the EQN debut was more of a tech demo; no enemy pathing, some were not fighting back.

The land mass shown in videos may not be known as Antonica

No zones, the world will be seamless

Oceans are not in game yet, though the engine is capable of rendering fluids.

Mining tunnels is in game and functions currently.

Class progress can be limited by choice – a player cannot pursue Paladin and Shadow Knights paths, for instance.

Rangers have been confirmed as a class.

Bows are a weapon type.

Combat will not be handled via auto-attack. Similar to NeverWinter combat, but more advanced.

Crafting comparable to that of Star Wars Galaxies, but more advanced.

There is no experience granted for killing mobs, no grinding. Combat and questing is handled as a series of objectives.

There are more than two factions in the game, not simply good v. evil, Freeport v. Qeynos, etc.

The game will be heavily gear dependent and crafted and dropped items will be of comparable value.

Players can choose the style of their look – giant shoulderpads or not, scantly clad to Joan of Arc.

Items have a sub component system allowing further customization of a specific armor set.

All items will be “Bind on Equip” (or pickup, the author is unclear).

Multiple servers with varying rule sets are possible, but undetermined at this point.

Day number two for SOE Live is winding down, and the information surrounding EverQuest Next is starting to trickle in from tonight’s panel discussions. In addition to our earlier recap article, read on to find out what else we have learned:

There are no levels in EverQuest Next. Progression is based on tiers and horizontal gameplay. There are 40 classes to “obtain,” and each is advanced individually once obtained.

Player stats are called attributes. Equipment will not provide attributes. Additional attributes will be extremely rare and will require tremendous effort to modify. All attributes will have impactful meaning for all classes.

Discovering new classes will occur at varying rates and occur through quest type events and may be restricted by player behavior and the impact of emergent AI.

Armor (and the ability to craft intricate armor components) will be a major form of character customization, and many custom items will be recognizable on sight.

The ability hotbar will have a maximum of 4 weapon skills and 4 class skills at any given time.

Each class comes with 4 class specific skills.

Crafting skill will not be advanced by repeatedly making the same item over and over.

Crafting components remain useful based on their properties, not on a crafting level.

Rallying Calls (public quests) will be ongoing until players on a specific server complete each stage.

Player housing will be in game, but no details are available yet.

There are at least 6 starting races: High Elf, Dark Elf, Human, Kerra, Dwarf and Ogre – there will be more, but as of yet unannounced.

Old school style mage pets are in EverQuest Next

Gear system provides 5 visual slots (chest, back, etc.), but each slot is made up of individual components that may also be swapped out.

Homage will be paid to the EverQuest franchise through locations, armor – an example used was the Flowing Black Robe.

Families of armor can alter your look – not just cloaks, but quivers, etc.

EQNexus has done an excellent job of giving us all of the details released thus far about EverQuest Next at SOE 2013. This is part one. Part two is coming and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that there’s a part three in the works.

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Now approximately 30 minutes after the debut of EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next: Landmark, I sit down and face the daunting task of summarizing what we just saw. It is certainly not an evolution of the MMORPG genre, but a complete revolution that uproots most of what we have grown used to, smashes it repeatedly into the ground, and dumps the remains into the 200 foot cavern that was just created. Here, in summary, is what we know about EverQuest Next.

A Complete Re-Imagining of the EverQuest World

The game is built based on 10,000 years of explorable history, including a Norrath that is literally several layers deep. Names and faces may be the same, but the roles they play may be different.

Complex and Dynamic Interaction with Environments

Everything you see in EverQuest Next is created with tiny building blocks named ‘voxels,’ and can be destroyed and rebuilt. Some areas will be subject to permanent destruction, while others will ‘heal’ themselves over time after devastating events.

“Learning” Content, Eliminating Static Spawns

Everything in EverQuest Next is designed with, for lack of a better term, a personality. In the example used in today’s presentation, an orc is designed to like remote highways where travelers may find themselves isolated, and loathes cities populated with guards or players who enjoy hunting orc packs for fun and profit. Orcs are spawned in EverQuest Next, but they will read and understand the culture and population of the server world, and dynamically choose where the best location would be to set up an encampment. If their particular stretch of treacherous highway becomes overpopulated with powerful travelers, if travelers learn to avoid the area, if guards begin their patrols, or if players just overpower the orcs, they will make the smart decision to pick up camp and try their luck elsewhere. This means no more ‘camp check,’ and that your travels will once again be unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

Players Making a Permanent Impact

The type of feature that keeps players coming back on a regular, even daily, basis; “Rallying Calls” will be types of public quests that will create permanent and unpredictable change in the world around you. And it will vary from server to server.

Dynamic Multi-Class System

Players will begin with a selection of 8 as of yet unknown classes. Through exploration of the world, they will have the chance to experience a total of 40 classes that may be combined together in a dynamic multi-class system. Each class will have special weapon abilities that will change as they equip new weaponry; weaponry that may be further changed and augmented by crafters and trade-skillers.

As players unlock more and more classes, they will be able to combine and mix abilities to make unique ability sets specific to their character.

Highly Interactive Movement

When dealing with the complex environments in Norrath, players will be able to use parkour style slides and jumps, specific to their class, that make movement far more dynamic than seen previously.

Super Expressive Character Models

In one of the more impressive visual moments in SOE’s presentation, a highly detailed set of emotes and animations were shown that give player characters expressive appearances that can only be likened to what is seen in the highest of quality animated films. These features will be totally compatible with SOEmote.

Sub Surface Gameplay

No longer will players head into a dungeon tunnel marked by a zone line and a loading screen. The very ground found on Norrath’s surface covers multiple layers below that are accessible through the dynamic constructive and destructive abilities players will use in the world. You may find yourself slammed through a stone walk way, only to land hundreds of feet below in an icy cavern.

Landmark

As part of an “open” design process, EverQuest Next: Landmark will launch later in 2013, allowing players the opportunity to design the actual content that may be found in certain parts of EverQuest Next. Not only that, but if players find your tools useful, they may even result in royalties for you through consignment in the SOE Player Studio

There is a tremendous amount of surface level information for us to process and digest over the next few hours and days. As it all begins to sink in, join us in the EQNexus forums for more fan reaction and discussion.

The EQNext announcement yesterday at SOE Live was mind-blowing. They are actually doing some revolutionary things in the MMORPG genre. This Landmark tool alone has the potential to get every person who’s loved Minecraft and every person who’s ever played EverQuest or EverQuest II in the same world creating jaw-dropping scenes.

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EverQuest Next Landmark, a free-to-play voxel building game, coming this winter

EverQuest Next’s entire environment—hills, forests, deserts, and cities—will be made of voxels, little bits of matter which can be smashed apart by explosive spells and giant Golems. Before we start breaking things, though, SOE wants us to start building—the developer is announcing today that it will be sharing its voxel building tools in EverQuest Next Landmark, a separate free-to-play MMO going into beta before the end of the year.

“Right away we noticed people were consuming a lot of cycles using these [voxel building] tools, because it’s really fun to build stuff and show off to each other,” said Director of Development David Georgeson in a meeting with PC Gamer. “And that’s not new! Minecraft has been doing that for a while, and once we realized that we had that element within the game, we realized, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if we gave the players the tools?’”

Georgeson showed me a brief demonstration of the tools. Take Minecraft and put it in PlanetSide 2′s Forgelight Engine, then imagine you have copy, paste, and undo functions, the ability to scale and rotate cubes, and smoothing and bevel tools which can subdivide edges. I can’t wait to see what players build.

“Landmark is a totally crazy thing, because we’re letting them build anything, anything at all!” said Georgeson. “Well, anything that customer service allows—we’ll have some interesting…but we have it handled.” No 500-foot-tall penises, gotcha.

All this will take place in persistent worlds, servers which will house a thousand or more players with “chat, and guilds, and marketplaces, and brokers, and all the things you expect in an MMO.”

To keep land ownership civil, players will get a flag with which to stake their claim. Their area, which can be expanded with more flags, will be protected from other players, while the unclaimed parts of the world are for free-for-all building. Georgeson also mentioned the possibility of “trustees”—players you explicitly allow to build in your territory—and experimental continents for group projects.

Players will also be able to sell their creations on Player Studio—similar to Steam Workshop—which Georgeson hopes will take off, earning money for both the creators and SOE. Even beyond direct sales, if one player builds a tower template and another buys that tower and uses it to build a castle, then sells the castle template, the original tower creator will still earn a cut automatically.

“[EverQuest and EverQuest 2] have a drawback in that you have to learn Maya, or 3DS Max, or Photoshop, and all these other tools, which greatly reduces the number of people who can participate,” said Georgeson. “In EQN and Landmark, those tools are already built into the game. They’re fun and intuitive to use. So we expect players to go absolutely crazy with it.”

Georgeson also plans to work with Landmark players to turn their work into permanent fixtures in EverQuest Next proper. Every Landmark world will have a continent reserved for EQ Next art direction, where SOE will run contests to build new EQ Next areas.

“As we build EverQuest Next, as we complete all these different areas and concept pieces and all the different materials and textures and stuff that go with it, we’re going to give that to all the Landmark players, and let them build EverQuest Next with us,” he said. “We’re really serious about this.”

EverQuest Next will also allow players to build with these tools, but owning land will be a more exclusive luxury.

“[Landmark is] kind of practice mode for EverQuest Next, because when you get to EverQuest Next you’ll actually have to earn your land,” said Georgeson. “You’ll have to fulfill quests and stuff like that to get a land grant from the equivalent of a duke or baron, and then you can start building on that. And a lot of the stuff you create in Landmark might be able to be brought over, as long as it fits the art direction.”

Read all about SOE’s exciting goals for EverQuest Next in our preview. Landmark is expected to be available before the end of the year.